Oscar winner Dukakis is no stranger to gay causes, as she proves again
MRS. MADRIGAL IN DALLAS | 82-year-old Olympia Dukakis has an unlikely history as a gay icon, from faves like ‘Moonstruck’ and ‘Steel Magnolias’ to gay parts in ‘Tales of the City’ and ‘Cloudburst.’ She arrives in town Monday to host a fundraiser for her latest foray into queer cinema, the Dallas-filmed documentary ‘Yankee Restraint.’
ARNOLD WAYNE JONES | Life+Style Editor
Imagine a career where you get to steal scenes with Cher (and win an Oscar for your efforts), play a transgender landlady, a lesbian looking to marry her partner and just get the biggest laughs in one of the iconic gay movies.
Olympia Dukakis doesn’t have to imagine; she’s done it.
“It is amazing how that happened,” Dukakis agrees during a telephone interview.
She first burst on the national scene playing mother to Cher in Moonstruck, and went on to camp it up in Steel Magnolias, as well as tackle the mysterious Anna Madrigal (“a man and a girl”) in the TV miniseries Tales of the City and its two sequels. Lately, she’s even gone lesbian — in the indie film Cloudburst (opposite fellow Oscar winner Brenda Fricker) and offered her participation in the upcoming Dallas-based documentary Yankee Restraint.
It’s the latter that brings her to Big D this week.
“I came to work on [Yankee Restraint] because I know the director, Harry Mavromichalis,” she says. “We’d talked about his life as a gay man and this documentary [came up]. It has a lot of Harry in it.”
The film documents the life of a gay Dallas couple, Craig and Philip, who have been together more than 30 years.
“They enjoyed a lot of success before the financial crisis.
Then they faced mortgage foreclosure and setbacks that put them in a place where you don’t know if they will be able to hold onto their relationship,” Dukakis recounts.
“The film documents their struggle and how they reinvent themselves — funny, dark-humored Craig and calm Philip. And it resonates for all of us — gay or straight. And I think it really encourages stories being told in Dallas, stories of human resilience.”
Dukakis herself is one of the more resilient of personalities. She celebrates her 82nd birthday later this month, and shows no sign of slowing down. Following her Dallas appearance, she heads to a festival in Lennox, Mass., where she will perform in Brecht’s masterpiece Mother Courage… And Her Children — a role she has tackled four times before (the last 20 years ago).
“It’s a lot of fun [to revisit a role],” she says. “You’re not so insecure, you take more chances. And anyway, I like to keep busy and do what I’m doing.”
Still, she knows she will be forever identified with Moonstruck, Steel Magnolias and Tales of the City. And she’s fine with that.
“Anna Madrigal is one of my favorite roles,” she says, and opened the door to her gay-rights activism. “I haven’t played that many [LGBT parts] really, but because I did that, I did fundraisers. It was a very important part for me. I felt that the dilemma, the conflict that character has was very viable and really worthy of our attention.”
And of course there’s Clairee, the sassy small-town socialite in Steel Magnolias who recounts one of gaydom’s favorite anecdotes: “All gay men have track lightin’, and all gay men are named Mark, Rick or Steve.”
“Those lines get thrown to me on the street all the time!” she laughs. “From [Steel Magnolias] and from Moonstruck.”
So, does that get annoying?
“No, it’s really funny, I appreciate it,” Dukakis insists. “It’s not like they make me stop — they just yell at me and keep going.”
This article appeared in the Dallas Voice print edition June 7, 2013.